Frugality as a Challenge

When I first started embracing frugality, I wasn’t thrilled with the process. It all seemed so limiting, somehow. I didn’t enjoy combing sales flyers and planting my own gardens. I wasn’t thrilled about hanging my clothes out on the line or trying to find yet another way to re-purpose a glass jar. It seemed that I was doomed to failure.

But then I started to look at frugality as a challenge and I started to treat it as such. I would challenge myself to make a product last a little longer. I’d challenge myself to see how long I could go without replacing an item, or if I could find something already in the house that would make a good substitute. I tried to see if I c

4 Responses to Frugality as a Challenge

However, it’s interesting in another way – when did the idea of a viable choice between living within your means or living beyond your means ever become so widespread?

Living beyond your means equals debt. Sooner or later there comes another, harder choice, living below your means to pay the borrowed money plus interest back or become bankrupt with all its attandant problems.

Minny, very interesting comment. When did it become okay for people to spend more than they make and head full force down the path toward bankruptcy (unless we change our course).

In an effort to help spend less than what I make, I got rid of my credit cards 10 years ago. Of course, it is nice to have one, for things like gas and emergencies. But it’s my much more responsible husband who carries it. We keep his habit of always paying it off on a monthly basis.

Our biggest challenge now, is that with our salaries reduced from what we made years ago, and our health care and just inflation rising, we really have too little left over for retirement savings unless we are to cut further still. And we don’t really like the idea of an even more frugal existence than what we’ve had to resort to (we’ve lived so much better).

But the simple things in life are so much more enjoyable. Friends took us out to eat the other day. It was the first time we’d been out since another set of friends invited us out (i.e. they paid for it) one year ago. What used to be a common-place weekly activity became a very special luxury.

Scarey in-laws! Hope you guys get along at this point as that sounded like more of a problem than just a spending issue.

My hardest thing is because of physical limitations that get worse, it feels like weekly at times, those frugal things I used to do become less and less and harder and harder to do. Even cooking a meal from scratch is a challenge when in great physical pain. And it is those of us with these problems that really need to be frugal because of the extra cost of health care and a decreased ability to earn more. Just feeling frustrated today!